Max Fromm

Max Josef Leopold Fromm (11 June 1910-4 August 1998) was an Oberst of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany who fought in World War II.

Biography
Max Josef Leopold Fromm was born on 11 June 1910 in the village of Wallerstein, Donau-Ries, in the Kingdom of Bavaria (present-day Germany). Fromm's father Heinz Fromm was a soldier of the German Empire who later served with the Bavarian 11th Infantry Regiment during World War I. His mother Anna Sophia Ratzenburg was a seamstress from nearby Nordlingen. Fromm joined the Reichswehr in 1927 and was initially stationed in Ingolstadt with reserve forces. However, after the Nazi coup of 1933, Fromm was dispatched to take part in the mobilization of German forces in the rise of Adolf Hitler. Fromm was made a Sergeant in 1938 and took part in the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Fromm was later promoted to Lieutenant during his involvement in the Polish Campaign of World War II in 1939 and served with the German 7th Army. Fromm was given command of his own force of 1,500 troops during the invasion of France due to his skills in aggressive warfare, proved during his taking of the Bar-le-Duc salient in May 1940.

Fromm was made an Oberst in July 1943 while serving on the Eastern Front and was given command of the German 412th Infantry Regiment and its small armored wing. Fromm served in the campaigns against the Soviet Union that included the battles for Kharkov and the fighting in Operation Bagration in June-July 1944. Fromm's regiment suffered heavy losses during the campaign, but he was able to retreat his men back to Lodz in occupied Poland in order to gather more replacements.

From 1944 to April 1945, he fought a retreating battle into Austria with his regiment. By 7 May 1945, there were no men suitable for replacements in their area of jurisdiction. Fromm's regiment was destroyed at the Battle of Bad Ischl by the US 7th Army under Alexander Patch and he was forced to turn in his unit's guns. He was held in Andersonville Prison, South Carolina, until 1947. He settled down in South Carolina after his prison sentence was up and died in Charleston, South Carolina in 1998,